


Turnabout

by Mortissimo



Category: The Tribe (TV 1999)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-24
Updated: 2008-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-11 21:30:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/117328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortissimo/pseuds/Mortissimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>You know the trousers of the universe? Well, canon is one leg (erase, release, disappointing lack of sex), "Agony/Thrill" is a second leg (sex, erase, keep), and this is a third leg (do not erase, sex, keep), which is probably the Candide scenario, which is to say the best of all possible worlds because nobody is amnesia'ed and Amber can go right to hell.</p></blockquote>





	Turnabout

  
I stroke his hair back from his forehead, staring at him hard in the moonlight. _God,_ I think, _what have I become to even consider doing this to him? What has he become to make me think it's necessary?_ It's not often I'm aware of my status as it should have been, before the world collapsed. I'd have been a child still, just on the edges of being an adult. Jay, too. None of us are meant for these roles we've been forced to take, not yet, and yet we take to them so readily, so fluidly. The hero. The villain. I bend to press a kiss to the 'T' he still wears, inexplicably, in the centre of his forehead.

I pull back to watch him shift a little, his clothes whispering against the sheets. Nevermind what I want, more than anything but order. It would have been rape. I've taken a lot of roles since the Virus, but I have always been proud to know what none of them have ever been rapist, and that none of them ever will be. This is as close as I'll get, bending a second time to my weakness to steal a kiss from the slack lips of the man I love. A man who doubtless holds nothing but contempt for me. In deference to him, I do not lick his perfect teeth. The kiss is kept chaste, as chaste as it can be with the cool, wet inner curves of his lips brushing mine. Beneath mine, his mouth moves, his lips pressing together, parting, shifting, and parting again. For a wild, breathless moment I imagine he's kissing me. My hand is halfway to cupping the back of his skull. Then,

"Mega," he whispers a second time, hoarsely, and I jerk back as though burned. He catches me in a streak of moonlight, and I'm sure that everything is written clear as day on my face. My intentions, my base emotions, regrets. "You didn't do it. I'm still here." His own expressions are unreadable to me, as they always have been.

"I can't," I whisper before I can stop myself, the word tumbling out broken and harsh. "Your mind's too good to erase. I don't want you to be a vegetable, don't want to see you hurt..."

"Could have fooled me." Jay has the nerve to have a dry sense of humour. Cavalier. I feel like retching, trying to purge myself of every black deed I've ever committed against him. I must have shown this, like everything else as plain as day, because he forces himself to sit up. He's far too close. I can feel his warmth, feel his breath against my face and my own reflected from him. I want to laugh, to sob, until whichever is rendered unidentifiable through dry heaves. To my shock, he cups my face in his hands, but his touch is gentle. His thumbs rest on my cheekbones, enough pressure to hold me steady without hurting.

"The things you do to me..." His voice is full of wonder, and I can't, I _can't_ make myself meet his eyes.

"You have no idea," I hiss raggedly, trying to overlay his hands with my own. Regain some of my blown control. I can't do it. His hands slip away before I can grasp them, sliding around to the back of my head. I'm left with my hands raised weakly, as though I pray to him. I feel him rather than see him lean in close. He brushes past my palms with a kiss for one, a swath of the tongue for the other. My hands settle like lead behind his neck as he presses me down into the mattress. I wait a beat. I wait another. His breath is warm and wet against my mouth, but he will not kiss me, and I will not arch up to meet his lips.

"Promise me this isn't one of your games, Mega." I give him disbelief, in the form of a little fluttering laugh that has nothing to do with humour.

"Oh God," I breathe, every inch of me aching for want of him. "If it is, I've lost." It isn't what I wanted to say, isn't the clever repartee that has marked most of our conversations, but it must be what he wanted.

He kisses me. For the first time of his own free will. I can feel the vibration of tiny pleading noises in the back of my throat, but I can't hear them over the rush of blood in my ears. I'm hard before his tongue slips past my teeth. One hand untangles from the other at the base of his neck, slides down to press into the sweat-slick skin of his back between the hem of his tank top and his belt. Running on pure lust, pure instinct, my legs draw up, splay wide and whorish for him to lie between. The first grind of his hips against mine makes me cry out and buck wildly against him, as sensitive as a virgin. The whole damn, trite world is right. It's worlds apart with the one you love.

"Have you done this before?" He mumbles against my throat, bemused and amicable as ever. How strange for him to be the calm one, with me so unhinged. I manage presence of mind enough to gasp an affirmative. "Really." I can hear clear doubt, and I would laugh, but his hips are twisting down again, his fingers tugging at the zipper of my shirt, and I can only groan. "How long ago was this?" He means it as a friendly jibe, I know, but it shocks my heart, nonetheless, more than I'd ever have expected. Damn Jay, he stops. He stops a long moment and pulls back enough to stare at me, half unzipped and trying to catch my breath.

"You don't want me to answer that," I tell him frankly, the words losing their power in faint gasps. For once, he listens to me, and lays down on top of me again, making short work of my shirt. My eyes slide closed in relief as I slide my hands up his back, under his shirt, and struggle not to remember. I remember.

It was the night before they took him. Ved came to me as he had so many nights, sullen as usual but with a strong core I'd never seen before. He told me frankly that he was leaving, and why, and if I felt any regrets they were solely of my body. So sweetly, I remember, he'd ducked to kiss me, and then kissed me again, as though he couldn't help himself. We fell into bed without a real plan. It had been slow and gentle between us before, a few times, but that night was the first and last time it had been sweet. Nevermind that he was in love with someone else, with a Mallrat girl, that it was her name he cried when I pressed into him for the last time. He was still sweet with me, and I with him. It was another's name, after all, that I choked on when I came, the same name I'd choked on every night since the first time he'd come to my door horny and alone. Ved had been the only one with my secret, the only one, until tonight, who had known I love Jay.

A sharp bite to my collarbone brings me back to the present with a short cry. His look is gentle but reproving as he licks and sucks at the spot in reparation. He pauses a moment to let me strip his shirt from him, tossing it God knows where in the meticulously organised clutter of my room. His teeth find my nipple next as my fingers fumble with his buckle, his hands gripping hard enough to bruise as he struggles to hold my hipbones to the mattress. I'm so close already I can feel it in the edges of my teeth. The belt finally surrenders, slithering into a coil on the floor. My own is next, easier at a more familiar angle, thrown with more violence. Jay sits back again, amused and a bit amazed, no doubt, to see me writhe and keen.

"Easy," he tries to calm me with a heartbreaking smile, bending down to claim my mouth briefly. I cry out into the kiss, grind our hips together, our cocks together, burning even through too many laters of cloth. "Easy," he repeats in my ear, stuttering a bit with his own faint groan. Jay's deft fingers unbutton and unzip my trousers, push them down with my underwear to my ankles where they too are kicked off into the oblivion of my room. His hands brush my cock, fascinated, and I let myself moan loud and ringing to see the surprise and lust in Jay's eyes. Now does he see what he does to me? His own trousers follow, nothing underneath as I had suspected, and finally, finally, there is nothing but skin between us.

I can't afford to spend more time in foreplay, with the edge of orgasm already creeping up fast and inexorable on me. I hook my legs around his thighs, tug at his shoulders until he lies obediently flat, and thrust up against him. The rhythm we establish is fast and erratic, the pants against my neck only now beginning to match the fervor of my own. It only takes a few strokes of Jay's skin against my cock to make me lose myself, keening my throat hoarse as I arch my back and come.

The world goes grey around the edges for a precious few seconds, and I come back to the feel of sweat- and come-slick skin grinding against me, Jay's cock like a brand in the hollow of my hip, his grunts in my ear obscenely beautiful. I can tell he is not far. He all but shouts in protest when I push him onto his back, pressing down his thrusting hips with the heels of my hands. I am merciful, however. I slide down his body quickly, snakelike. A moment is taken for breath, admiring the trembling of his thighs, the vague purpling of his cock and the sheen of his precome, of myself spread wanton and opalescent over the dark hair there.

I hear my name, begged sharply. I can refuse Jay nothing. I swallow him whole in one, hear a long stream of lovely obscenities like air released from a tire. He doesn't last long either, spending himself in long, thick spurts that I swallow eagerly, heedless of the taste. A hand to the back of my neck pulls me off and I curl with my head on his hip, legs hanging off the end of the bed.

"Come back to the mall with me," he murmurs, a moment or minutes later, and frankly I'm not surprised. I want it, yes, more than life, for the long space of a few heartbeats.

"I can't," I sigh into his skin, regretful. There's love and then there's duty, and I can't allow the one to supersede the other. I will fix this world if it kills me, if it kills Jay, if it kills the world. But there's a thought. I sit up sharply, braced against Jay's hip, and stare down at him, debauched and beautiful.

"Stay with me." I can see opposition almost before I'm done speaking, his eyebrows knotting together and distorting his 'T'. "Advise me. Help me control the city. Your way, if you want. Or a compromise." I'm not exactly reduced to begging, but it's really only a matter of time at this point. And yet... I can see something in his eyes shift.

"I can contact the Mallrats." It's not a question, but a point of address in a negotiation. And it's a given. I nod, and I think I may be smiling.

"Whatever you want. Just talk to me." He's going to agree. I can feel it. My hand on his hipbone tightens and I want to kiss him very badly, but I have to see this through. I've waited years for this, I can wait a minute more.

"And how do I know you won't leave me on a trash heap to die?" I've never even considered it, and something of my shock must show in my face, because Jay's expression lightens almost as soon as it has darkened.

"Just listen," I ask honestly, giving in to the desire to kiss him again.

"So long as you'll do the same," he murmurs against my lips, and I am powerless to deny him.

"I will."

**Author's Note:**

> You know the trousers of the universe? Well, canon is one leg (erase, release, disappointing lack of sex), "Agony/Thrill" is a second leg (sex, erase, keep), and this is a third leg (do not erase, sex, keep), which is probably the Candide scenario, which is to say the best of all possible worlds because nobody is amnesia'ed and Amber can go right to hell.


End file.
